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Monday, February 16. 2009

Here's something in Facebook that I definitely don't like. Several times the past week when I was sending a message to a friend in Facebook, I was presented with one of those annoying security captchas to type in to prove I am a human and not a spambot.

Or was that really the purpose? Facebook offered me the chance to avoid these in the future. How?

Facebook uses security tests to ensure that the people on the site are real. Having a mobile phone helps us establish your identity. Please verify your account by confirming your phone here. We'll text you a confirmation code. Please select your country code (e.g. '1' for US/Canada) and enter your mobile number without any special characters.

How does having my mobile phone add security? What it DOES add is my mobile phone number to their growing database of my personal information. This is not good, and I don't think their explanation is honest.

Quick answer to Maria's comment below: One place to find out about Facebook doings is http://www.insidefacebook.com. How's this for some scary, recent statistics -

Facebook has hit the 175,000,000 active user mark, just 5 weeks after it hit 150 million users in January. At this rate, Facebook has been growing by well over 600,000 users per day over the last several weeks, continuing the company’s torrid growth pace. If Facebook were a country, it would now be the 6th most populous in the world.